


I'll Be Remembered, But I'd Rather Be Loved

by Sheep_with_teeth



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Love Letters, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29301132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheep_with_teeth/pseuds/Sheep_with_teeth
Summary: Rayla tries to get Callum to take an interest in history.(Callum would rather be interested in Rayla).
Relationships: Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 70





	I'll Be Remembered, But I'd Rather Be Loved

**Author's Note:**

> There's art for this fic!
> 
> On tumblr: https://me-see-world.tumblr.com/image/642605925206736896
> 
> On twitter: https://twitter.com/sheepydraws/status/1358962276913405952

“That was bullshit,” Rayla muttered on the way out of history. 

Callum squinted at her. “What was?”

“Ms. Brenna didn’t even talk about the warrior princess.”

“Who?”

Rayla gave Callum a look of exasperation, mixed with just enough contempt that he side-stepped another student so he and Rayla had to walk single file down the hall. 

“The warrior princess!” Rayla repeated, raising her voice over the din of passing period. “The only elf before Anitaas to be in the royal tomb of Katolis! And Anitaas isn’t even dead yet!” Anitaas was the current wife of the current king of Katolis, and their marriage had rocked everything from the high council to the two-dollar tabloids at the supermarket. 

Callum had no idea how someone with Rayla’s endless energy could sit still long enough to listen to musty old stories, let alone care about them. It was kind of cool when Ms. Brenna talked about the way history echos and reverberates down the years, but the rest of the time it all went: ‘Some people went here and had a fight. They made some pottery/amor/buildings, and then burned some records just to piss the historians off’. 

For Callum ‘The Nameless Prince’ just epitomized that. Five hundred years ago there was King Ezran the first. He was credited for re-uniting human and elfkind, and being a powerful bridge between Xaidia and Katolis, and riding a banther into the throne room to claim his crown.  
History has passed down more things about Ezran than could possibly be true. That banther thing was definitely folklore or symbolism or something, but even that was better documented than the fact the King Ezran had a brother. 

Maybe.

Whose name he purged from every conceivable record where it had ever been written.

Possibly.

All that remained were a few paintings his maybe brother could have possibly done. The artist remained a mystery because his signature has been cut from the canvas. It was like five hundred years ago they knew infrared technology was coming and wouldn’t merely paint over the name so some lazers could uncover it a few hundred years later  
That was where history and Callum parted ways. The damage was done. The possible prince was nameless. Why wonder who he had been or why King Ezran had excised him so completely from the historical record? It seemed to Callum that history was just a game of chance. Some records were plucked from burning buildings and thrust into the future, others crumbled to dust where they were laid. 

“What does a warrior princess have to do with the nameless prince?” Callum asked as they entered their empty biology classroom. Mr. Shin was probably at lunch. He usually arrived two minutes late, crumpling a burrito wrapper into the trash. That meant there were roughly four minutes left in passing period. Time which Callum could spend standing by the water fountain which just happened to be next to Ms. McKinley’s room, where Claudia just happened to have English for fifth period-oh, is it fifth period already, Clauds? I hadn’t even noticed!

Rayla threw her arms into the air. “She’s only the best part of the whole story!”

Callum dumped his bag in his assigned seat so he could get back into the hall. The desks in the biology room were long black tables which seated two each, and Callum was all the way at the end of a row, sitting next to the wall. Callum turned around to find that Rayla had followed him down the narrow aisle between desks. If he wanted to get out he would have to squeeze past her in a very obvious way, in terrible contrast to the very mild stalking he had planned. 

Rayla continued. “We only know the nameless prince exists because we found his tomb, right?”

“They blotted out his name, but gave him a tomb?”

“Yes!” Rayla was gesticulating way more than this information deserved. “He’s buried in one of the royal catacombs under the Old Palace. Although for some reason he’s in the one for royal consorts, right next to Queen Sarai which…” Rayla waved off the tangent. “Well, anyway, no one knew who he was, so they got the right to examine his coffin, and they found this really old box-“

“As opposed to all the shiny new things he was buried with,” Callum said, expecting the cuff on the shoulder he absolutely got.

“The contents were damaged, but it was a really specific box. It was, you know, letter shaped and made of fancy wood and had dragon leather and embossing and stuff.”

“You can’t emboss dragon leather,” Callum said with the air of someone who has spent more than one afternoon on the internet watching book binding videos. “It’s too strong, and if you try to make it thin enough to emboss it falls apart.” 

Rayla crossed her arms over her chest. “It was embossed, I’ve seen pictures.”

“Technically you can do it, but you have to press it for over a month, and spray it down in between and it’s way more expensive than it’s worth.”

“Callum,” Rayla said, fixing him with her eyes in a way that sent a shiver straight down Callum’s spine. For all her enthusiasm Rayla didn’t focus on just one thing very often. When she looked at him like that it made him feel like he was a slide under a microscope. Both terribly important and completely transparent at once. “What part of ‘secret royal love letter box’ are you not getting? Of course he paid for the most ridiculous thing available.”

Other students were filing in, and Callum knew his Casual Chit-Chat with Claudia window had closed. At least Rayla had filled it with something that was starting to sound interesting. Callum sat down and pulled his pencil case out of his bag. “How do you know they were love letters? If they were so damaged?”

Rayla raised her eyebrows, signaling that this was the good bit. “Well, there was a locked tomb in the catacombs, and they got permission to look at it around the same time-it was some whole big excavation-and it had a coffin with a box inside that was identical to the nameless prince’s, except it was made out of marble so we can actually read the letters.”

People settled into their seats. The noise level dipped in anticipation of class. Callum leaned towards Rayla, lowering his voice. He heard the door swing open, and knew without looking that it was Mr. Shin wafting in with the scent of carne asada. 

“But how do they know those were love letters?”

It was rare to see Rayla discomfited, and Callum was happy to have a front row seat. Her cheeks darkened as her eyes skittered to the floor like she’d dropped a pencil that was rapidly rolling out of reach. “I have a book with some of the translations in it. Trust me. Those were love letters.”

She wouldn’t be so embarrassed if she didn’t believe it. Callum trusted her, but suddenly he really wanted to know what racy correspondence from five hundred years ago looked like. 

“Prove it,” Callum said as Mr. Shin turned on the projector. “I want to see this book.”

Rayla nodded. “You can come over after school.”

Callum was fairly certain he only wanted to look at the book, but as Rayla spoke he realized this was what he was fishing for all along.

By the time school let out and Rayla and Callum walked the blocks back to Rayla’s house Callum had learned that the warrior princess was an elf. She earned her moniker by also being expunged from records. Unlike the nameless prince she had her own private tomb in the royalty wing decorated with mosaics and weapons. So she got a way cooler adjective than ‘nameless’. 

Callum was sprawled on Rayla’s bed, doing his english reading, but actually trying to decide if he should raid Rayla’s freezer for chicken tenders. Rayla was hunched over her desk, flipping through a small, thick book with onionskin pages, searching for the passage that would explain everything. This was taking longer than necessary because tidbits kept catching her attention that she had to relay to Callum. 

“You know that painting Ms. Brenna showed us?” Rayla asked.

“The horse or the lady?”

“The scary lady.”

Callum repressed a shudder as that dark gaze ran through his mind. “What about it?”

“They think the nameless prince painted it, since he was probably her husband.”

Callum wanted to call bullshit, but instead he just made a face like he’d eaten a lemon. The painting looked incomplete, a woman’s face turned away, half in shadow, her shoulders rising from the neck of her dress, but her body fading from the chest down. Her white hair, pulled off her face into a tight chignon, glowed. Not like the moon or the gentle phosphorescence of algae, but in a way that evoked buzzing fluorescent lights. Her face was no better. It was oddly smooth for someone with completely white hair, and Callum got the sense that half wasn’t hidden in the dark for as an artistic flourish. There was something wrong there, something terrible hidden as deftly as a scar under a dress shirt. 

In short, it was not how Callum would depict a woman he was married to. 

“I found it!” 

Callum snapped to focus on Rayla.

“This is the letter that was best reconstructed, but there are still some parts missing. Anyway.” Callum thought Rayla would pass him the book, but instead she sat straight in her desk chair, cleared her throat, and began to read: 

_There is no doubt that I will return to you. Every night I rise for you like the moon. I can stray no further than the tide from the shore._

_It is possible you speak to dissuade me. You borrow guilt at interest, as you always have. If you wish to tell me why I should leave you, you must know I will not hear you…_

_I ask so little of you, but I will ask this: Remind me not of duty. Remind me not of callow youth. Remind me not that I am destined to part from you again._

_Give me peace in this world, my dear. Despite dreams, we shall not have another._

“That,” Rayla gasps, “Is a love letter!”

She’s breathless, eyes bright, face transformed by five hundred year old words. She’s shining a little, giddy, like it’s her who’s in love. 

Callum isn’t sure what to say to this Rayla who reads love letters for the sake of love. She has poetry hanging around her, draped over her horns and winding through her hair. Which isn’t white, as he always thought. It’s a silver that catches the light with each tilt of her head.

There is just enough silence between them that Callum fumbles for something to fill it with: “Did he sign his name on any of these?”

“He couldn’t! He was married to that other lady.”

Callum considered that, picking at Rayla’s comforter so he didn’t have to look directly at her. He peeked, though, out of the corner of his eye. “Well, why’d he marry her if he was in love with the warrior princess?”

Rayla made a slightly rude sound. “It was five hundred years ago. King Ezran brought Xadia and Katolis together, but elves and humans couldn’t just walk around holding hands and reciting poetry at each other. ”

“I never thought you’d be into that kind of story,” Callum said thoughtfully. “You know, kissing in the rain and making googley eyes at each other across conference tables or whatever they did.”

Rayla ducked her head for a moment, but her confidence swiftly returned. “I can’t help it. It’s beautiful. Humans and elves were almost in an all-out war, and these two were writing each other love letters. I mean, I know it’s sad that they couldn’t be together, but…it’s real. Battle tactics are interesting, but it’s this stuff that people were really doing, what they were really thinking about hundreds of years ago.”

“That is kind of beautiful,” Callum conceded. It’s like a rainbow or the sun dazzling off snow, or an endless June sunset. The kind of beauty that makes you ache. “Do you think it would still be beautiful if they had a happy ending?”

Rayla flapped a hand through the air. “Oh, I’m sure they do. They met in the here-after or were reincarnated or something.” Then she laughed. 

Callum wasn’t sure if what she said was funny, but when she laughs her head goes back and Callum doesn’t care about ancient love stories or secret letters. He decided right then and there that he was going to paint her. Beautifully. 

Then a thought struck Callum: _Unlike some nameless prince five hundred years ago, I can._

And he laughed, too.


End file.
